Booking versus presence
A booking states an intention. A check-in states that someone was there. Door James keeps the two apart and reports both.
Product
Utilization data you can defend in a meeting
Every occupancy figure is only as good as its definition. This page explains exactly how Door James counts.
In short
Door James derives office utilization data from bookings and check-ins rather than from sensors: a booking is an intention, a check-in is measured presence, and the gap between them is the no-show rate. Metrics are available per location, floor, area, resource and weekday, cover employees, visitors and meetings, and can be exported for BI reporting – without evaluating individual employees.
- Source
- bookings and check-ins, no sensor hardware
- Core metrics
- occupancy, check-ins, no-shows, cancellations
- Dimensions
- location, floor, area, resource, weekday, period
- Privacy
- resource-level reporting, configurable anonymization
What the data covers
No-show rate
The share of bookings without a check-in. The single most useful number for anyone who thinks the office is fuller than it is.
Peak simultaneous presence
Not the monthly average but the busiest hour of the busiest day – the number that determines how many desks are genuinely needed.
Weekday pattern
Utilization by weekday and time of day, so the Tuesday peak and the Friday trough become visible as a pattern, not an anecdote.
Visitors and meetings
Visitor numbers and meeting room usage count towards building load as well and are reported alongside desk data.
Comparison across locations
Sites side by side over the same period – the fastest way to spot the location whose lease should be looked at first.
Scheduled reports
Recurring evaluations are delivered by email to facility management, HR or real estate without anyone logging in.
Export for BI
Utilization and booking data can be exported and combined with rent, headcount and cost data in your own reporting.
Three numbers that usually disagree
Ask three departments how full the office is and you get three answers. HR counts headcount, facility management counts badge swipes if the building has them, and the person who walks the floor on Wednesday counts impressions. None of them is wrong; they measure different things.
Utilization data is only useful when its definition is written down. That is why this page states the definition rather than a marketing figure: Door James counts a resource as used when a booking for it was confirmed by a check-in. Everything else – the booking that nobody honoured, the walk-in who sat down without booking – is reported separately or not at all, and we say which.
What the no-show rate is worth
The most valuable number in the set is usually the one nobody asked for. A no-show rate of 30 per cent means that a third of all reserved desks stayed empty while the booking system showed them as taken. For employees that is a daily annoyance: the floor plan is red, the floor is empty. For finance it is a distortion that makes the office look fuller than it is, and that has led more than one organization to renew space it did not need.
Fixing it is rarely a technology problem. A check-in requirement with automatic release after fifteen or thirty minutes solves most of it, because the incentive changes: an unconfirmed desk becomes available to a colleague.
Honest limits of the method
Booking-based measurement is an approximation of presence, not a measurement of it. It does not see the person who came in without booking, it does not know which room someone actually sat in, and it depends on people confirming their arrival. Sensor-based systems measure presence more directly and raise a different set of questions – installation cost, maintenance, and a works council conversation about continuous monitoring.
We are explicit about this trade-off because the figures are used for decisions with real consequences. Where the data is uncertain, it should be presented as uncertain; a utilization report that claims more precision than its method allows is worse than no report.
Who it is for
For real estate and finance
Defensible figures for lease decisions, instead of an estimate that the next meeting reopens.
For facility management
Cleaning and service intervals tied to measured use rather than to a fixed schedule.
For works councils and data protection
A documented measurement logic that reports on spaces, not on people.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the utilization data come from – do you need sensors?
No sensors. Door James uses data that daily operation produces anyway: bookings, check-ins by QR code or geofence, visitor registrations and meeting room reservations. That has one clear limitation and one clear advantage. The limitation is that coverage depends on check-in discipline. The advantage is that no hardware has to be installed, approved or maintained, and that the data explains itself – every figure traces back to an action someone took.
How is occupancy defined exactly?
Occupancy is the share of bookable resources in an area that were checked in for a given day or time window. Bookings without a check-in are not counted as occupancy; they appear separately as no-shows. This is deliberately conservative: it under-reports rather than over-reports, which is the safer error when the figure is used to reduce space.
Can individual employees be evaluated?
The reports are built around resources and areas, not people. In addition, anonymization periods can be configured after which the personal reference is removed from historical data. Where a works council agreement sets stricter limits, the configuration follows the agreement – that conversation is usually easier here than with sensor-based systems, because there is no continuous measurement of presence.
How long does it take before the data is meaningful?
Plan for four to six weeks of regular use. Shorter periods are distorted by holidays, project peaks and the novelty effect of a new tool. For a lease decision we would work with at least one full quarter.
Can we get the data into Power BI or our own warehouse?
Exports are available, and they are the standard route into existing BI reporting. For automated, recurring transfers the available interfaces are discussed during the rollout, since the sensible design depends on your target system.
What happens if people forget to check in?
Then occupancy is under-reported and the no-show rate rises. Both are visible, which is the point. In practice a check-in requirement with automatic release after a grace period raises discipline quickly, because a desk that is not confirmed goes back into the pool and becomes someone else's.
Help Center
See this module on your own floor plan
Thirty minutes with someone who works on the product. Bring your floors, your booking rules and the awkward case you think will break it.